Dear Reader,
So much of what we do in local academic contexts sociologically mirrors larger macro issues. We encounter New World Order autocratic leadership in our community colleges. We are faced with having to make decisions about how to relate to that authoritarian administrative leadership and the policies imposed on faculty, staff, and students. For nearly two decades now, my writing has looked at the micro-contexts where I've worked and connected the interactions in those places to the work of scholars whose ideas affect me: I have made a practice also of connecting my experiences in micro-contexts to larger sociological realities.
Lately, Americans in general have witnessed the spread of a sociological/psychological illness that is the American authoritarian right. I’ve been watching for years prior to this current political malaise as that same illness played out in my own local teaching context, a place where autocratic leadership rapidly grew and became emboldened to the point of systematically quelling any questioning of authority. The college's administrative authoritarian personalities, from the lowest levels up, assert antidemocratic practices and policies through the manipulation of business law; and thusly, do they enforce their domination.
Chairs, assistant chairs, deans, and so-called colleagues narc out those daring to question the status quo in local contexts. Human resource goons creep our Facebook pages, our blogs, our internal email correspondences, searching, always searching for impropriety--on or off the clock. All correspondence--published works, past writing, and even comments at Faculty Senate--can be considered affronts to the administrative authorities and can, subsequently, be used to support administrative disciplinary actions.
The disciplining process is all internal in my community college context. Nobody has been fired... yet. The administrators outsource the dirty work of their disciplinary processes. A private contractor with no background in post-secondary education brings a pure business-oriented objectivity to the process of inquisition. That person facilitates thorough investigations and determines the propriety of course content or faculty communications. Dare to write an email that is perceived as threatening, but would not be so considered by the campus police or the courts, dare to write a Facebook post using satire to express your discontent with anti-intellectual, narrow-minded, whim-based testing processes, dare to write a blog entry that contains the wrong ideas, dare to create a motion in a faculty senate meeting that questions an administrator's acceptance of gifts exceeding the board-mandated amount, dare to do anything the administration or the goons or the narcs dislike, and you could be subjected to an internal inquisition: you will be investigated. This authoritarian illness has developed over the past four years and now permeates every level of social reality in my local community college context. The illness spreads in ways that ever more empower and embolden authority in my local context: it never crossed my mind that that rising authoritarianism was always a local symptom of the more widespread ailment caused by the uncontrolled spread of American authoritarianism. But now, I recognize that my micro context was truly experiencing the kind of American authoritarianism that metastasized in the current macro-level politics.
The interaction in the email-based dialogue below typifies the kind of social reality some Americans now experience in academic workplaces where the New World Order authoritarianism has gained legitimacy, a process often facilitated by the instituting the kinds of leadership strategies found in my humble context, implementing policies that support autocratic leadership practices that uses business law to facilitate the suppression of opposition and strengthen the status quo. This leadership employees the rhetoric of unsubstantiated allegation, name calling, and threat to quell questioning. In such a reality, Kafkaesque surrealism becomes the daily norm. That is, the surreal has become real. This is the new authoritarianism.
Let me now present the dialogue....
Here is the context. You teach at a fictitious community college in a metropolitan area in the Land of Make Believe. The Big Muddy River meanders it's way through the flat lands where before the KKK and sundown towns abounded back in the day. It's a place of tornadoes, the northern extension of the South's influence.
Your colleagues have an exit examination that they use, a high-stakes testing process designed to spot any writers who don't write and keep them from moving forward. They test students in basic writing classes. They test students in college-level writing classes. That means minority and multilingual minority students' writing gets plucked out of the pile of papers at higher percentages than does the writing of small-town, functionally illiterate whites. Your colleagues subject students to high-stakes testing until almost all the color is bleached from the classroom. Nobody has assessed the level of whiteness at the highest level writing classes. Why would they think to do something like that? Why would any of your colleagues think to look at the classes they teach and ask, "now, where did all the color go?"
Knowledge of writing assessment theory is nearly nonexistent. Knowledge of general assessment theory is dolled out and managed by not-for-profit corporations that leach public funding in the name of governing public academic institutions. If you have published in the area of assessment theory, you are a spider to all the others. These are folks who will claim a Pearson custom publishing text as a self-authored book in print. This is the New World Order community college context.
You work in a place where your colleagues will punish students in order to punish you. In the past, you were forced to subject basic writers to this high-stakes barrier examination when they were in the third week of an eight-week class, after you expressed concern because your students had been forced to take the examination in the fourth week of an eight-week class. This is the New World Order ethos of micro-context management and testing.
This semester, your basic writers were expected to show their readiness to enter college-level classes by taking the barrier examination in the tenth week of a sixteen-week class. Nobody has provided any written explanation of the examination process. Nobody has provided a written explanation of what the examination is supposed to do nor and explanation of how it accomplishes whatever it is that it is supposed to accomplish. Those who enforce it never have to explain in writing or verbally what they are doing or why they do what they do. It is; therefore, it is unquestionably correct.
You know the exit examination coordinator and the department chair would like to have you fired for insubordination because you have raised questions about dual credit and the barrier examination in the past. You have openly written letters about labor issues that you disseminated to colleagues. You know these lowest level administrators are trying to build a case that shows you do not do things you “should” be doing. Accordingly, as a full-time, tenured professor, you recognize it is advisable to respond to any allegations in a way that will allow you to explain your position should you have to go to court because you were fired for disagreeing with those in charge.
So the dialogue begins…
Email from Exit Examination Coordinator to The Professor, The Chair, The Dean, and The Librarians
Professor,
If you are not going to use the library lab that I reserved for your students to type the exit paragraphs, it would be much appreciated by the librarians for you to let them know. That way that reserved time can be open for another class to use.
Exit Examination Coordinator
Email from The Professor to the Group
Exit Examination Coordinator,
Basic writing students are uniformly described in College Composition and Communication, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, and a variety of other mainstream journals in the field as having the greatest needs in terms of gaining access to technology. It's a given in our conversations about developmental education and the idea of providing support for those who need it. Basic writers' functional illiteracy quite often includes the inability to type effectively. Without consistent access to technology, basic writing students are placed at a disadvantage in general and especially in high-stakes testing conditions. That disadvantage becomes especially evident if the basic writers are suddenly required to adapt to changes of any kind, especially changes that require them to do things they don't know how to do (like operating a computer) and while focusing on a particular task (like authoring a paragraph for a barrier examination). There are substantial discussions explaining the emotional turmoil experienced when socially traumatized students are suddenly placed in new contexts. Accordingly, it makes sense to maintain consistent patterns with basic writers and to provide them with the basic resources needed to complete assignments and build basic skills.
Perhaps we could use this opportunity to reflect on the idea that only one of my five basic writing classes was scheduled in a computer room. I am sure the other computer rooms were being used and that there were no computer rooms available for the basic writing students, and, to be honest, I do enjoy the body conditioning that goes with walking the two miles every day that takes me from Building 1 to Building 2 to Building 3 and then back to Building 1 (or 2, depending on the day or which tornado it is that picks me up). Since only one basic writing class was scheduled in a computer room, the other four classes would have been required to walk up to an extra half mile to get to the assigned computer labs in the library. Then I would have been required teach students how to use the computers and the text-processing program prior to taking the high-stakes test. In order to avoid such pretesting conditions and for the sake of supporting those students who most need access to technology (because they tend to have the least access sociologically), perhaps it would be possible to either schedule more basic writing classes in classrooms where there are computers or look into ways of getting more computers for basic writers. Then it would be less difficult to help students learn how to manipulate the computers they would be required to use in a high-stakes testing condition such as that created by the College Exit Examination process.
In the past, the classroom instructor was never required nor expected to confirm the location of student testing. The basic expectation was that the testing would happen in the teacher's assigned room or in a computer room if the professor chose to use the computer room. Nobody has ever requested that the professor report his or her choice of testing location. Perhaps there was some notification of this change in policy? Did I miss the memo? If so, I apologize. I also apologize to the wonderful people in the library if their scheduling was in anyway interrupted. As a side note, they have helped me this year with research on both the history of teaching paragraph writing (for an article I was penning) and with some research I needed to do in order to respond to an article on internships that was an assigned peer review for TETYC. I am deeply grateful for their assistance and would never want to confound their efforts. Because I have never changed the location for the barrier examination from the daily classroom, reporting my plans this time did not even occur to me. If I missed a memo or some comment in the letter of instruction, I apologize.
In order to avoid any confusion in the future in terms of my 091 classes, please, do not assign a computer room specifically for the barrier examination. Those basic writers in my classes who spend the semester in a computer room will have their high-stakes testing experience in the computer room. Those basic writers who attend class in traditional classrooms will take the barrier examination in the assigned traditional classroom. Each student who is then characterized as a "fail" by the testers will subsequently have the opportunity to choose to use or not use a computer while doing the re-take examination, unless that is no longer an option. (The question is, do we now have a typing requirement for basic writers or college-level writers that we did not have before? If not, then my practice would work because it allows students the chance to type if they feel able to type when they do the re-take examination. The same holds true for the appeal process for those students who qualify for that part of the testing process.) If, for some reason, it is necessary to continue scheduling computer rooms for my classes that are not already taught in computer rooms, please know that I will, from this day on, be sure to let everybody know that I won't be taking my students to the assigned rooms prior to the high-stakes tool. I do apologize for any confusion caused. I was only following what I thought to be fourteen years of past precedent. Again, if there was a notification and I missed it, I apologize.
Hopefully, our administrators can figure out how to create some more computer rooms. I know I would be grateful if they did that: it would be wonderful for the students in my basic and college-level writing classes. In the meantime, if possible, perhaps the scheduling could be reorganized (if it's not too much trouble) in a way that would land me and the basic writing classes in computer rooms: the basic writers sure need that kind of learning experience since so many of them do not type well or have much access to technology beyond their cell phones, which have available data on some days and not on other days and require thumb typing rather than keyboarding.
The Professor
Email from the Department Chair to The Professor, The Exit Examination Coordinator, the Librarians, and the Dean
Professor,
I am not quite sure of the history of this…ummm…series of events, but after reading your “reply” to The Exit Examination Coordinator’s concern four times, I am even more confused.
As I understand the events from what The Exit Examination Coordinator wrote you, she was trying to do you a favor by reserving a computer lab for your students’ exit exam. In no way do I read in that email to which you responded an implication that your students must write their exit exam on a computer… perhaps there should be. I plead ignorance as to what is best. This not my area of expertise.
What I do know is that The Exit Examination Coordinator made a simple request that perhaps you have the courtesy to inform the librarians that you are not going to be using those labs that The Exit Examination Coordinator had reserved for you. After all, they are in high demand. And after four readings of your “response”, I do not see a single thing that might be construed as a response to that request. What I do see, is a typical The Professor rant about the entire exit process. A rant that has been made over and over for many years now. This rant may have some merit to it…I plead ignorance as this is not my area. But I do know it is entirely inappropriate as a response to a plea for courtesy to the librarians.
The Department Chair
This message and accompanying documents are covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. sections 2510-2521, and contain information intended for the specified individual(s) only. This information is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient or an agent responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you have received this document in error and that any review, dissemination, copying, or the taking of any action based on the contents of this information is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail, and delete the original message.
Email from the Assistant Chair/Exit Exam Coordinator to The Professor, The Chair, the Librarians, the Dean, and the Independent Learning Center (ILC) Staff
The librarians noticed you did not use the computer lab reserved for your 091 classes to type their exit paragraphs. From reviewing your sections’ packets, it seems four of your classes were not permitted to type and had to hand write their work, but one section of students typed their exit paragraphs. Clearly, you did not utilize the labs in the ILC that were reserved for your students either. Those labs are in high demand as well; however, your disregard for the ILC staff, library staff and students has been duly noted.
Unfortunately, by not allowing all of your students to type their work, you have provided only some of your students the advantages that typing allows – access to spell and grammar checkers. Not allowing them to type also does not meet the usual college-level requirement of a typed final draft for any formal assignment. Your actions have created an unequal testing situation for students in your sections who were not allowed to type their work. Moving developmental students to college level paper expectations is one of your jobs as the instructor of the class. These students will be required to type papers in all of their classes in their college level courses.
In the fall 2016, having all students use a computer to type their exit paragraphs and essays will be a requirement and providing the students access to a computer lab will be required of you as an instructor of these classes. I will reserve labs for the students; the schedule is provided in enough time in both fall and spring for you to tell the students where they will type the exit paragraph or essay.
If you have any confusion regarding this part of the exit exam procedure, be sure to send your questions to the department chair. Do not email me.
Exit Exam Coordinator
Concluding Statement
Dear Reader,
So ends the dialogue...
I had thought to write a conclusion filled with deep contemplation on what makes a micro context and how micro-contexts can be used to gain insight into macro context developments. But none of that really matters.
What I have to say instead is related to the consequences of apathy. What you get if you remain apathetic is a context where the surreal aspects of The Trial become the dominant reality: nobody will tell you why, but you are guilty of everything. In such a surreal reality, the New World Order autocratic domination can be maintained with unsubstantiated allegation, undeveloped definition, scapegoating, and all the other usual tricks.
You can make another choice. You can chose hope. To hope is to imagine possibility, to believe that healthy co-humanizing environments can overcome the horrors of American authoritarianism as it plays out in our academic contexts. To hope is to honor all those who passed before us, to honor all those who devoted themselves to scholarly endeavors, to all those who worked tirelessly to support free speech, academic freedom, and basic labor rights.
To hope... to hope is the more beautiful choice. To hope is to shine brightly the light of possibility into the darkness of depravity.
Yours with hope,
Albert Mudwatter
So much of what we do in local academic contexts sociologically mirrors larger macro issues. We encounter New World Order autocratic leadership in our community colleges. We are faced with having to make decisions about how to relate to that authoritarian administrative leadership and the policies imposed on faculty, staff, and students. For nearly two decades now, my writing has looked at the micro-contexts where I've worked and connected the interactions in those places to the work of scholars whose ideas affect me: I have made a practice also of connecting my experiences in micro-contexts to larger sociological realities.
Lately, Americans in general have witnessed the spread of a sociological/psychological illness that is the American authoritarian right. I’ve been watching for years prior to this current political malaise as that same illness played out in my own local teaching context, a place where autocratic leadership rapidly grew and became emboldened to the point of systematically quelling any questioning of authority. The college's administrative authoritarian personalities, from the lowest levels up, assert antidemocratic practices and policies through the manipulation of business law; and thusly, do they enforce their domination.
Chairs, assistant chairs, deans, and so-called colleagues narc out those daring to question the status quo in local contexts. Human resource goons creep our Facebook pages, our blogs, our internal email correspondences, searching, always searching for impropriety--on or off the clock. All correspondence--published works, past writing, and even comments at Faculty Senate--can be considered affronts to the administrative authorities and can, subsequently, be used to support administrative disciplinary actions.
The disciplining process is all internal in my community college context. Nobody has been fired... yet. The administrators outsource the dirty work of their disciplinary processes. A private contractor with no background in post-secondary education brings a pure business-oriented objectivity to the process of inquisition. That person facilitates thorough investigations and determines the propriety of course content or faculty communications. Dare to write an email that is perceived as threatening, but would not be so considered by the campus police or the courts, dare to write a Facebook post using satire to express your discontent with anti-intellectual, narrow-minded, whim-based testing processes, dare to write a blog entry that contains the wrong ideas, dare to create a motion in a faculty senate meeting that questions an administrator's acceptance of gifts exceeding the board-mandated amount, dare to do anything the administration or the goons or the narcs dislike, and you could be subjected to an internal inquisition: you will be investigated. This authoritarian illness has developed over the past four years and now permeates every level of social reality in my local community college context. The illness spreads in ways that ever more empower and embolden authority in my local context: it never crossed my mind that that rising authoritarianism was always a local symptom of the more widespread ailment caused by the uncontrolled spread of American authoritarianism. But now, I recognize that my micro context was truly experiencing the kind of American authoritarianism that metastasized in the current macro-level politics.
The interaction in the email-based dialogue below typifies the kind of social reality some Americans now experience in academic workplaces where the New World Order authoritarianism has gained legitimacy, a process often facilitated by the instituting the kinds of leadership strategies found in my humble context, implementing policies that support autocratic leadership practices that uses business law to facilitate the suppression of opposition and strengthen the status quo. This leadership employees the rhetoric of unsubstantiated allegation, name calling, and threat to quell questioning. In such a reality, Kafkaesque surrealism becomes the daily norm. That is, the surreal has become real. This is the new authoritarianism.
Let me now present the dialogue....
Here is the context. You teach at a fictitious community college in a metropolitan area in the Land of Make Believe. The Big Muddy River meanders it's way through the flat lands where before the KKK and sundown towns abounded back in the day. It's a place of tornadoes, the northern extension of the South's influence.
Your colleagues have an exit examination that they use, a high-stakes testing process designed to spot any writers who don't write and keep them from moving forward. They test students in basic writing classes. They test students in college-level writing classes. That means minority and multilingual minority students' writing gets plucked out of the pile of papers at higher percentages than does the writing of small-town, functionally illiterate whites. Your colleagues subject students to high-stakes testing until almost all the color is bleached from the classroom. Nobody has assessed the level of whiteness at the highest level writing classes. Why would they think to do something like that? Why would any of your colleagues think to look at the classes they teach and ask, "now, where did all the color go?"
Knowledge of writing assessment theory is nearly nonexistent. Knowledge of general assessment theory is dolled out and managed by not-for-profit corporations that leach public funding in the name of governing public academic institutions. If you have published in the area of assessment theory, you are a spider to all the others. These are folks who will claim a Pearson custom publishing text as a self-authored book in print. This is the New World Order community college context.
You work in a place where your colleagues will punish students in order to punish you. In the past, you were forced to subject basic writers to this high-stakes barrier examination when they were in the third week of an eight-week class, after you expressed concern because your students had been forced to take the examination in the fourth week of an eight-week class. This is the New World Order ethos of micro-context management and testing.
This semester, your basic writers were expected to show their readiness to enter college-level classes by taking the barrier examination in the tenth week of a sixteen-week class. Nobody has provided any written explanation of the examination process. Nobody has provided a written explanation of what the examination is supposed to do nor and explanation of how it accomplishes whatever it is that it is supposed to accomplish. Those who enforce it never have to explain in writing or verbally what they are doing or why they do what they do. It is; therefore, it is unquestionably correct.
You know the exit examination coordinator and the department chair would like to have you fired for insubordination because you have raised questions about dual credit and the barrier examination in the past. You have openly written letters about labor issues that you disseminated to colleagues. You know these lowest level administrators are trying to build a case that shows you do not do things you “should” be doing. Accordingly, as a full-time, tenured professor, you recognize it is advisable to respond to any allegations in a way that will allow you to explain your position should you have to go to court because you were fired for disagreeing with those in charge.
So the dialogue begins…
Email from Exit Examination Coordinator to The Professor, The Chair, The Dean, and The Librarians
Professor,
If you are not going to use the library lab that I reserved for your students to type the exit paragraphs, it would be much appreciated by the librarians for you to let them know. That way that reserved time can be open for another class to use.
Exit Examination Coordinator
Email from The Professor to the Group
Exit Examination Coordinator,
Basic writing students are uniformly described in College Composition and Communication, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, and a variety of other mainstream journals in the field as having the greatest needs in terms of gaining access to technology. It's a given in our conversations about developmental education and the idea of providing support for those who need it. Basic writers' functional illiteracy quite often includes the inability to type effectively. Without consistent access to technology, basic writing students are placed at a disadvantage in general and especially in high-stakes testing conditions. That disadvantage becomes especially evident if the basic writers are suddenly required to adapt to changes of any kind, especially changes that require them to do things they don't know how to do (like operating a computer) and while focusing on a particular task (like authoring a paragraph for a barrier examination). There are substantial discussions explaining the emotional turmoil experienced when socially traumatized students are suddenly placed in new contexts. Accordingly, it makes sense to maintain consistent patterns with basic writers and to provide them with the basic resources needed to complete assignments and build basic skills.
Perhaps we could use this opportunity to reflect on the idea that only one of my five basic writing classes was scheduled in a computer room. I am sure the other computer rooms were being used and that there were no computer rooms available for the basic writing students, and, to be honest, I do enjoy the body conditioning that goes with walking the two miles every day that takes me from Building 1 to Building 2 to Building 3 and then back to Building 1 (or 2, depending on the day or which tornado it is that picks me up). Since only one basic writing class was scheduled in a computer room, the other four classes would have been required to walk up to an extra half mile to get to the assigned computer labs in the library. Then I would have been required teach students how to use the computers and the text-processing program prior to taking the high-stakes test. In order to avoid such pretesting conditions and for the sake of supporting those students who most need access to technology (because they tend to have the least access sociologically), perhaps it would be possible to either schedule more basic writing classes in classrooms where there are computers or look into ways of getting more computers for basic writers. Then it would be less difficult to help students learn how to manipulate the computers they would be required to use in a high-stakes testing condition such as that created by the College Exit Examination process.
In the past, the classroom instructor was never required nor expected to confirm the location of student testing. The basic expectation was that the testing would happen in the teacher's assigned room or in a computer room if the professor chose to use the computer room. Nobody has ever requested that the professor report his or her choice of testing location. Perhaps there was some notification of this change in policy? Did I miss the memo? If so, I apologize. I also apologize to the wonderful people in the library if their scheduling was in anyway interrupted. As a side note, they have helped me this year with research on both the history of teaching paragraph writing (for an article I was penning) and with some research I needed to do in order to respond to an article on internships that was an assigned peer review for TETYC. I am deeply grateful for their assistance and would never want to confound their efforts. Because I have never changed the location for the barrier examination from the daily classroom, reporting my plans this time did not even occur to me. If I missed a memo or some comment in the letter of instruction, I apologize.
In order to avoid any confusion in the future in terms of my 091 classes, please, do not assign a computer room specifically for the barrier examination. Those basic writers in my classes who spend the semester in a computer room will have their high-stakes testing experience in the computer room. Those basic writers who attend class in traditional classrooms will take the barrier examination in the assigned traditional classroom. Each student who is then characterized as a "fail" by the testers will subsequently have the opportunity to choose to use or not use a computer while doing the re-take examination, unless that is no longer an option. (The question is, do we now have a typing requirement for basic writers or college-level writers that we did not have before? If not, then my practice would work because it allows students the chance to type if they feel able to type when they do the re-take examination. The same holds true for the appeal process for those students who qualify for that part of the testing process.) If, for some reason, it is necessary to continue scheduling computer rooms for my classes that are not already taught in computer rooms, please know that I will, from this day on, be sure to let everybody know that I won't be taking my students to the assigned rooms prior to the high-stakes tool. I do apologize for any confusion caused. I was only following what I thought to be fourteen years of past precedent. Again, if there was a notification and I missed it, I apologize.
Hopefully, our administrators can figure out how to create some more computer rooms. I know I would be grateful if they did that: it would be wonderful for the students in my basic and college-level writing classes. In the meantime, if possible, perhaps the scheduling could be reorganized (if it's not too much trouble) in a way that would land me and the basic writing classes in computer rooms: the basic writers sure need that kind of learning experience since so many of them do not type well or have much access to technology beyond their cell phones, which have available data on some days and not on other days and require thumb typing rather than keyboarding.
The Professor
Email from the Department Chair to The Professor, The Exit Examination Coordinator, the Librarians, and the Dean
Professor,
I am not quite sure of the history of this…ummm…series of events, but after reading your “reply” to The Exit Examination Coordinator’s concern four times, I am even more confused.
As I understand the events from what The Exit Examination Coordinator wrote you, she was trying to do you a favor by reserving a computer lab for your students’ exit exam. In no way do I read in that email to which you responded an implication that your students must write their exit exam on a computer… perhaps there should be. I plead ignorance as to what is best. This not my area of expertise.
What I do know is that The Exit Examination Coordinator made a simple request that perhaps you have the courtesy to inform the librarians that you are not going to be using those labs that The Exit Examination Coordinator had reserved for you. After all, they are in high demand. And after four readings of your “response”, I do not see a single thing that might be construed as a response to that request. What I do see, is a typical The Professor rant about the entire exit process. A rant that has been made over and over for many years now. This rant may have some merit to it…I plead ignorance as this is not my area. But I do know it is entirely inappropriate as a response to a plea for courtesy to the librarians.
The Department Chair
This message and accompanying documents are covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. sections 2510-2521, and contain information intended for the specified individual(s) only. This information is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient or an agent responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you have received this document in error and that any review, dissemination, copying, or the taking of any action based on the contents of this information is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail, and delete the original message.
Email from the Assistant Chair/Exit Exam Coordinator to The Professor, The Chair, the Librarians, the Dean, and the Independent Learning Center (ILC) Staff
The librarians noticed you did not use the computer lab reserved for your 091 classes to type their exit paragraphs. From reviewing your sections’ packets, it seems four of your classes were not permitted to type and had to hand write their work, but one section of students typed their exit paragraphs. Clearly, you did not utilize the labs in the ILC that were reserved for your students either. Those labs are in high demand as well; however, your disregard for the ILC staff, library staff and students has been duly noted.
Unfortunately, by not allowing all of your students to type their work, you have provided only some of your students the advantages that typing allows – access to spell and grammar checkers. Not allowing them to type also does not meet the usual college-level requirement of a typed final draft for any formal assignment. Your actions have created an unequal testing situation for students in your sections who were not allowed to type their work. Moving developmental students to college level paper expectations is one of your jobs as the instructor of the class. These students will be required to type papers in all of their classes in their college level courses.
In the fall 2016, having all students use a computer to type their exit paragraphs and essays will be a requirement and providing the students access to a computer lab will be required of you as an instructor of these classes. I will reserve labs for the students; the schedule is provided in enough time in both fall and spring for you to tell the students where they will type the exit paragraph or essay.
If you have any confusion regarding this part of the exit exam procedure, be sure to send your questions to the department chair. Do not email me.
Exit Exam Coordinator
Concluding Statement
Dear Reader,
So ends the dialogue...
I had thought to write a conclusion filled with deep contemplation on what makes a micro context and how micro-contexts can be used to gain insight into macro context developments. But none of that really matters.
What I have to say instead is related to the consequences of apathy. What you get if you remain apathetic is a context where the surreal aspects of The Trial become the dominant reality: nobody will tell you why, but you are guilty of everything. In such a surreal reality, the New World Order autocratic domination can be maintained with unsubstantiated allegation, undeveloped definition, scapegoating, and all the other usual tricks.
You can make another choice. You can chose hope. To hope is to imagine possibility, to believe that healthy co-humanizing environments can overcome the horrors of American authoritarianism as it plays out in our academic contexts. To hope is to honor all those who passed before us, to honor all those who devoted themselves to scholarly endeavors, to all those who worked tirelessly to support free speech, academic freedom, and basic labor rights.
To hope... to hope is the more beautiful choice. To hope is to shine brightly the light of possibility into the darkness of depravity.
Yours with hope,
Albert Mudwatter